There is no arguing that media creators are producing a staggering amount of digital media on their Go Pros, iphones and Black Magic or Sony 4K digital camera.

Yet, Pro8mm, the world leaders in the innovative use of Super 8 film is the busiest it has been in years. With major indie production companies such as Radical Media, MJZ, 44 Blue and 3 Horses and a Mule, and Interloper Pictures initiating new Super 8 film projects, newbie’s are flocking to try their hand at analog filmmaking with the easy to use, cost efficient Super 8 format.

The question then becomes is there a resurgence in the interest to shoot on film because of its proven archival capacity, or, are hipsters and the Millenniums wanting to shoot film before it’s gone?

This interview, full of what I like to call “Philmisms” by Pro8mm president Phil Vigeant offers an opportunity for us to think about the future of film. Like Stephen Spielberg, JJ Abrams and so many other backyard filmmakers who threw out the camera manuals and just experimented to see what worked and what didn’t, the next generation of analog lovers will have the opportunity to experiment and learn the film craft based on over 100 years of motion picture technology.

I believe it’s not the “last shot” for film, but the “best shot” for lovers of celluloid, new opportunities for entrepreneurs who can emerge from the shadows of Kodak and Panavision.

One of the things I love the most about having a weekly radio show such as The Home Movie Legacy Project is getting to interview people who are telling their own stories about what they discovered in their family films, and how it helped them move forward in their lives.This was just the interview I did a couple of weeks ago with Shamey Cramer,

Shamey is an older returning student at Woodbury University as a film student. Five generations of family members involved with photography and newspaper publishing has afforded Shamey to collect a treasure trove of documented family archives going back to the 1860’s. These still images, movies, videos and other ephemera are the basis for his planned docu-series “Heidkamp: A Modern American Tribe”, tracing the journey of his German-Luxembourg ancestors and their American descendants. The first installment will be the story of his mother, Rosemary Heidkamp Cramer.

Shamey was a 2002 Semi-finalist for the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences; and recently completed his historic love story “Nature of Fire” which details the 15-year affair between 18th century French physicist Emilie du Chatelet and the philosopher Voltaire. The project took fifteen years of research and the dialogue is his own translations of their written words.

Shamey tells about his family, his work on the 1996 Olympics for Kris and Bruce Jenner, his encounters with the Kardashians and how is has used his film skills in your political/human rights work, including the Federation of Gay Games.

Listen to my interview and learn about palative care, dignity therapy and home movies

I recently had the opportunity to interview Carol Weeks Bright Future Hypnotherapy . Carole Weeks is a Certified Hypnotherapist, a graduate of The Hypnotherapy Motivation Institute, in Reseda, California. Her practice is located in Sierra Madre, California . She works with clients who have a range of needs for improvement in their lives. In addition, she has trained with Dr. Harvey Cochinov in Dignity Therapy. Dignity Therapy is a palliative care intervention. Through an interview using a standardized interview protocol a legacy document is created with an individual at the end of their life. The document is the result of an interview using a standardized interview protocol that has been developed and researched by Dr. Cochinov and his research team at the University of Manitoba, Manitoba, Canada. The client presents the final document to his loved ones.

Find out who can benefit from creating this legacy document and the benfits of hyponotherapy as it related to life changed. I feel that in conjunction with a person looking at their home movies, this additional work in Dignity Therapy will help people feel like they matter, and certainly, help their families gain a deeper level of understanding and compassion about their loved one.

Recently, a friend of mine who has been divorced for several years asked me if I would transfer her Wedding Video, so she could watch it on a modern playback medium. She felt it was time to give some closure to this part of her life and she wanted to look with fresh eyes and new life experiences back to her wedding day. She was moving to a new place, getting rid of old clothes, massively purging, and getting ready to change careers. She wisely thought that by watching the wedding video she would be able to gain some additional momentum to move forward as she began this next chapter. When she visited me, about two months later I asked her if she watched the movie. “No”, she said. “I’m not ready”. I thought about this for a minute, without attaching any particular meaning or judgement. I remembered all the clients I had worked with over the years who had also been resistant to watch old home movies. The fear of not knowing what is on the reels manifests itself in the cycle of desire to know and confusion about dealing with emotional scares from the people who have hurt us. Lets face it. There is a lot of pain in the past. We push the hurt way down, until something triggers a memory, and that old stuff comes up. We use imagery to play the tapes in our mind. We rewind them in our head. We press play. We feel the hurt. We hit eject. But the stories are still there. But what if those old tapes aren’t right? What if they are just stories we made up to help us cope? What if we had new evidence that we could extract from a time machine that could capture “life in the moment” and when we revisited it, it revealed new information, more details, or allowed us the opportunity to give new meaning because WE are a different person that we were when the moment was recorded? What if this “time machine we call “HOME MOVIES helped us heal from the hurt, let go of our fear, or allowed us to attach new meaning? What if they challenged everything we believed (up until now) and gave us new insight, so we could shift our focus, transform our understanding, and move forward in our life? What if we could forgive fuller, and clean up a mess or misunderstanding with an ex-spouse, family member or friend. We could have a breakthrough – an ah-ha moment that would allow us to become “unstuck”, and live more joyful, authentic and grateful lives. We could heal and we could forgive. THE POWER OF HOME MOVIES… “Images act as shortcuts to our brains, and that is why visuals are so powerful” – Ekaterina Walter This is exactly what happens when you watch a home movie. These films are the most organic form of physical evidence we have. Our body language, posture, eye contact, facial expressions, shyness or tenacity are all captured , frame by frame. We see how the people in the film treat each other. Like magic, we are back in the moment! People are constantly looking for ways to heal from pain and hurt. We make use of various types of therapy, imagery, regression, hypnosis. We try to access memories that have been blocked and even when we do , how do we know those memories accurately recall the way it happened? In my podcast today, Brittany and I discuss how working in the adult contemporary domains can help you have ah-ha’s where you might be getting stuck in the past. A powerful interview you won’t want to miss! http://bit.ly/1p7zWkb

on August 7th. Nathan is making a documentary that includes archival footage with a cause. The goal is to spread awareness for a rare disease called Miller’s Syndrome. Friends since childhood, Nathan joins forces with his friend Logan Madsen and as filmmaker and subject , they join creative forces to illustrate what daily life is like for someone with this complex rare disease. There are only 30 known cases worldwide, and Logan and his sister Heather both have it. The film makes use of home movies as a powerful visual of what life was like for Logan as a child , and now, how he adapts and copes with this disease that has so many symptoms, including being on the autism spectrum.

As a filmmaker, , Nathan Meir is a talented filmmaker who understands the narrative genre . He raised 25K on Kickstarter.

Every family has the option to store their original home movies in a professional vault at a consumer friendly price

Often times people don’t give much thought about best ways to store their analog media shot on film. If your like many people, your old home movies are in shoeboxes or cartons stored in the attic, basement, or – somewhere. If film is stored properly, meaning away from extreme heat, wet, humidity and dampness, in can last over 100 years. By taking some simple ( and relatively inexpensive steps) you cans tore your private home movies in a Hollywood Vault, right next to

Iconic TV shows. This will slow down the biological decay of film, such as Vinegar Syndrome (when your film starts to smell like an old salad) shrinkage, curling, becoming dry, brittle and cracked, giving it an opportunity to be their for your descendants.

While we always want digital copies in the cloud (Film Storage Wars Part 1), on our hard drives, or even DVD’s, we must protect the original analog material from the elements and natural disasters. Whatever formats may prevail in the future; you always want to create a new digital master fro the original film.

Pacific Title and Archives in Hollywood is a fantastic facility that allows private clients to purchase space in their climatically controlled, archival safe film fault. Away from the elements, including fire, flood, and earthquake. It is EXTREMELY affordable. Listen to my interview with Ken Smith, Director of Client Services to find out about the benefits of storing your precious home movies securely with Pacific Title and Archives

What we can learn from Elvis about creating a Home Movie LEgacy that lives!

Have you ever been to Graceland? I must admit, it was never on my bucket list of things I had to see, but how can you be in Memphis and not stop by for a peek? After all, no matter if you are a fan of Elvis Presley or not, you cannot dispute the talent of the man, or incredible body of work he was responsible for creating.

Our Southern tour included giving a workshop on Home Movie Archiving in New Orleans to rescue some water damaged film, a visit to the amazing archives at The Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, with a stop at Gus’s Fried Chicken, a visit to Birmingham to the Civil Rights Museum and the church where the tragic 1964 shooting of 3 little girls shot and The Watson’s Go To Birmingham was Filmed (my company Pro8mm worked on the recreated Super 8 Film scenes for the Hallmark Hall of Fame Movie,) and of course, a stop at where Martin Luther King was shot outside the Lorraine Hotel and Sun Studios in Memphis to see and feel the intimacy of this legendary studio where Elvis recorded, and scenes of the John Mellencamp film “It’s About You” were shot – done exclusive with our Pro8mm film, processing and scanning , shot by filmmaker Kurt Markus. Graceland was not on the itinerary.

As we arrived, very early in the morning to have a jumpstart on the heat and the crowds and caught that first glimpse through the gates at this larger than life tribute to the work of one person, I realized that gift shops and tourist junk aside, that what Graceland was really about was giving total access to a families archival and legacy material. On par with Presidential Libraries, this was an archive built in and around his home, where the family and the Elvis Presley Foundation gets to decide and create how the “Kings’ Legacy will be kept alive. By creating an experience through dozens of displays, showcasing everything from Gold Records, Movie Posters, Jumpsuits, photos, and home movies as well as cars, jewelry and other memorabilia, that by the time we leave we feel an intimate connection to someone we already thought we knew well.

Many years ago we had transferred some home movies for the Presley family, and have seen many private home movie collections with Elvis footage that they captured during his personal appearances. What an enormous thrill for me it was to see this footage playing at different places throughout the estate.

So what can we learn from this? The lesson is really quite simple. We want to create a microcosm of Graceland to honor our own family. We want to find other people who might have footage about our loved ones. We want to have an “open archive” so that our families, descendants and even the public know about the contributions our loved ones made to the community, family, church, military or business. This is the living legacy we leave , and the benefit is that it puts an end to Suspicious Minds.

EXPOSING “REEL” INSPIRATION TO CREATE A MEDIA LEGACY THAT LIVES! – ON ROCKSTAR WORLDWIDE, PRODUCED BY THE DOUBLEWIDE RADIO NETWORK Double Wide Network

Listen to our Radio Show Live Thursday at 4 PST/7EST

I remember it was in the fall of 2012 after I published my book Get Reel About Your Home Movie Legacy Before It’s Too Late! that I got serious about developing a platform to share my message and passion about home movies, why they are important, how they can help you heal or understand your family better, and ofcourse, teach the crucial part of archiving, preservation and how to bring these films into your digital life.

After 30 years of working in the entertainment industry on Hollywood blockbusters such as Argo, Super 8, JFK that had home movie flashbacks in them and TV shows such as American Idol, VH-1 Behind The Music, I saw that the home movie archiving part of our business was growing. Celebs, the Hollywood “A” list and industry people really wanted to take care of their personal media the same way they took care of their professional media. I wanted more than anything to teach the masses to do the same.

Upon the urging of my marketing coach Craig Duswalt I was convinced that a weekly radio show was a great and powerful way to reach the masses. After just one show, I was hooked, and after a year we were reaching 10,000 people a month who wanted to learn not just about the “how” but the “why” – why you want
To bring these films from the past into the present so they will be there for the future.

We have over 50 shows in our iTunes library, and will be adding a new show each week.

Tune in live Thursdays at 4:00 PM. Call and be part of the show 480-945-0442Download the App